Eckhart, Heidegger, and the Imperative of Releasement by Ian Alexander Moore (review)

The principle aim of this book is to underscore and examine the enduring influence that the medieval philosopher and mystic Meister Eckhart had on the thought and work of Martin Heidegger, specifically with respect to Heidegger's understanding of Gelassenheit(releasement). At once an inquiry into both Heidegger and Eckhart, this assiduously researched, elegantly written, and largely compelling book deals with a number of (at times lesser known) texts of both authors in order to show the essential resonances of these two thinkers.

The book is broken into three parts. Part 1 examines, in a somewhat cursory way, what the author considers to be the most important passages within Heidegger's corpus where Eckhart is mentioned. Effectively operating as a sketch of the book as a whole, part 1 capably demonstrates that Eckhart was an omnipresent figure for Heidegger throughout the trajectory of the latter's work, even during those periods when he was not dealing with him directly. It also convincingly demonstrates that Eckhart's influence on Heidegger extends far beyond the latter's understanding of Gelassenheit.

Part 2 serves as a focused inquiry into Eckhart's thought. There is only the occasional mention of Heidegger in these pages, although the author admits that he interprets Eckhart through a Heideggerian lens. Through an analysis and comparison of Eckhart's so-called Latin texts with certain of his German writings, as well as a fascinating exploration into Eckhart's relation to scholasticism, the author provides a detailed and insightful analysis of Eckhart's understanding of the "relationship" between the human being and god, as well as a thoroughgoing inquiry into the role of Gelassenheit(or, in Eckhart's Middle High German, gelâzenheit) within that relation. My reason for placing the word "relationship" within scarequotes will become readily apparent to everyone who reads the book. Although part 2 will be most beneficial to scholars familiar with Eckhart's work, it nonetheless presents important and substantive background for contextualizing Heidegger's understanding of the "relationship" between the human being (or Dasein) and being. Moreover, the author provocatively suggests in this section that the writings of Eckhart's being analyzed exceed the ontotheological structures and strictures in which his thought was otherwise situated, effectively setting Eckhart forth as a philosophical precursor to Heidegger.

Part 3 returns to an analysis of some of Heidegger's works in terms of the discoveries from the previous chapters. Focusing on several texts spanning the turbulent years 1928 to 1945, the author demonstrates the crucial importance of Eckhart's understanding of Gelassenheit to Heidegger's thought, even during those years when Heidegger's thinking seemed to depart most radically from the kind of "letting-be" that characterizes such releasement. Through precise and engrossing engagements with several of Heidegger's texts, most notably Country Path Conversations and Introduction to Metaphysics, the author suggests that Heidegger's thought remained methodically similar throughout his corpus (where "method" must be taken in the nonscientific sense that Heidegger himself develops), and that it is this method that, perhaps more than anything else, binds Heidegger to Eckhart. Part 3 thus challenges the somewhat customary division of Heidegger's corpus into an early period (characterized by an unrelenting focus on the will and its resoluteness) and a late period (characterized by a turn away from the will toward being itself), arguing instead for a certain unity of form, if not of content, throughout Heidegger's path of questioning.

The final eighty pages or so of the book consists of several interesting and helpful appendices that bear upon Heidegger's intellectual relationship to Eckhart, including a list of editions of Eckhart's books that Heidegger owned or referenced, a painstakingly researched account of the marginalia from Heidegger's own copies of Eckhart's work, as well as two previously untranslated scholarly presentations dealing with Eckhart's work presented by students of Heidegger. These appendices alone make the book an...